


Fall To Your Knees

by DGCatAniSiri



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-26
Updated: 2016-12-26
Packaged: 2018-09-12 08:48:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9064726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DGCatAniSiri/pseuds/DGCatAniSiri
Summary: Adaar and Cullen have a discussion in the Inquisition chapel.





	

Finding Cullen in the Chantry chapel off of Skyhold’s garden wasn’t entirely unexpected, but Anaan still wasn’t sure how he should even enter the small room, taken up mostly by a large statue of Andraste. He had never exactly been welcome in them before being dubbed the Herald of Andraste, and, by virtue of his horns and grey skin, he couldn’t even slip in quietly to watch. 

So he waited in the doorway as he watched Cullen pray, whispering a segment of the Chant of Light. 

It wasn’t very long before Cullen turned to him, a small smirk on his lips. “You don’t have to stand out there, you know.”

“I didn’t want to interrupt you.”

“Prayer is usually more comforting if you’re not alone in asking for it. Strength in solidarity, I think.”

Almost as if he thought he’d burst into flame at the act, Anaan crossed the threshold into the chapel. He glanced around, as though afraid Andraste or even the Maker would appear and strike him down for a heathen daring to enter this space.

And Cullen seemed to recognize Anaan’s discomfort, chuckling as he pulled himself back up. “You’re in no danger of being struck by lightning, you realize.”

“That’s what you say. Meanwhile, every Chantry priest I even met before...” He waved his Marked hand. “...all of this always looked at me as if I defiled their Chantry just by looking in its direction.”

“Well, I’m no priest, and, at the very least, you’ve been given permission, given the Mark,” Cullen offered as a counterargument. 

That was enough to get a chuckle from Anaan. “Fair enough, though I’m sure there are some Mothers who’d still disagree with that.” He looked to the overbearing statue in the center of the room. “I suppose I also never really had the inclination to make the attempt. The Chantry wasn’t going to accept me, I never really found myself willing to turn around and offer them love and support in return.”

“I can understand why. Cassandra and Leliana might have a harder time with that, of course.” The two candidates for the Divine were still waiting to hear what might come, now that Corypheus was defeated. 

The mere mention of the debate of who would be the next Divine caused Anaan to shudder. “Please don’t remind me of that. Mother Giselle still seems to think I should make some kind of public endorsement of one of them, and she and Vivienne both seem to think it should be Cassandra. Neither of them seem willing to accept the fact that I don’t care who gets the pointy hat.”

Despite himself, Cullen found himself smiling at the irreverence towards the trappings of the Chantry – if the Inquisition had taught him anything about Chantry politics, it was that the whole messy affair focused far too much on the accumulation of power, rather than being true to the ideals that supposedly had founded it. “What is Josephine’s take on things, dare I ask?” He doubted the Inquisition’s ambassador was all that pleased by the Inquisitor’s refusal to get involved.

“Considering that when the Mother came to Skyhold to insist that Cassandra and Leliana go to Val Royeaux, the only reason that I didn’t tell her exactly where she could put the Sunburst Throne was because Josephine was there to cut me off, I think she’s relieved I’m abstaining.”

Put that way, Cullen could understand Josephine being relieved. “The Chantry is certainly... flawed. I will admit that. Still... I cannot deny that I’ve found comfort in Andraste’s words over the years. I realize that you probably find that silly, but-”

“I don’t, Cullen.” Anaan gently placed a hand on Cullen’s arm, “I don’t want it to seem like I want to take away from something that has given you comfort.”

“But you believe it’s nonsense?”

“I didn’t say that.” Though, in all honesty, and particularly given his own experiences of the Fade, where there was no Maker, no Andraste, no singing ethereal choir, he was much inclined to say that the Chant of Light was nothing more than a sometimes pretty song and the Maker was a blanket Andrastrians wrapped themselves up in. But that tended to be the kind of statement that got him into trouble with the believers.

“I have paid attention, Anaan. I know how you feel about the Chantry. You’ve made those feelings quite clear over the last year.” There was a note of bitterness in Cullen’s voice, which surprised them both – Anaan for the unexpected lashing out from Cullen and Cullen for the fact that he hadn’t fully realized his bitterness towards his lover’s lack of faith. 

Despite the vehemence of his words, however, Cullen knew that they’d been a mistake, an error in judgment by speaking them aloud, especially when Anaan had displayed nothing but understanding to him, despite his feelings towards the Chantry. Almost immediately, Cullen looked away, feeling the need to apologize, knowing he’d said the wrong thing. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair of me. You weren’t raised with it, and then were immediately made into a figure of it against your will. I shouldn’t – I can’t hold any of that against you. I should know better than to even think that.” 

Anaan was silent for a moment, letting some of the heat in the air dissipate. Then he took a step to the side, continuing to offer Cullen a wide berth. “It’s not the faith itself, Cullen. I don’t care what people believe, I really don’t. That you come here and pray... I’ll admit, I don’t really understand it, but I won’t tear it down just because of that fact. That’s been what I’ve tried to devote the Inquisition to, to protecting people regardless of their beliefs. The whole time people have been trying to make me out as this... figure of the religion. I’m... I suppose I’m not built to believe in gods, but everyone keeps looking at me like I should be... more pious, more of a believer in something that I’ve never seen as being for me.”

Mercifully (and probably wisely), Cullen did not launch in to a speech of how Andraste’s words were for everyone, and he should not feel turned away for being qunari. He simply listened, ultimately just nodding in understanding. “I understand. I just... I suppose I hadn’t given much thought to what it would be like... having a lover who was raised outside the Chantry. Without the belief in the Maker that has... almost defined much of my life.” He chuckled slightly. “I certainly never expected to fall for a man who lived outside of the faith his whole life. It’s... more complicated than I expected, I suppose.”

“If it helps any, I didn’t expect to fall in love with a man who had been a templar, promised to the Chantry.”

That elicited a chuckle from Cullen. “You make it sound like I was a brother in the Chantry, not a templar. They devote their lives to the Chantry. I simply... was part of the templar order.”

“I’ve never really felt there was much difference, at least up until the war, when the templars broke away from the Chantry. It was always a difference that didn’t make anything different to me,” Anaan pointed out. Granted, the templars and the Valo-Kas and various other mercenary bands who used apostate mages tended to give each other a wide berth, given the hostilities that tended to erupt between the two groups whenever the templars attempted to impose the Chantry’s rules on them at swordpoint. 

That much, Cullen would have to admit, wasn’t wrong. In practice, the templars had often acted as an arm of the Chantry. It wasn’t difficult to see how they’d end up being deemed the same by those who lived separate from the Chantry. “Still... I never made that kind of a vow.” He sighed. “What are we doing, Anaan?”

“Talking?” Anaan offered, though he knew that it wasn’t what Cullen had meant.

“We are such different people, from such different backgrounds. How can we make this work? It’s so complicated, and I’m not sure we can... If we have such differing beliefs, can we really last in the face of... what comes next? Dealing with Corypheus was one thing, but... If we’re going to continue this relationship further... Are we capable of making it work?”

“I don’t see it as a matter of what we believe, Cullen. What matters is that we are making the effort to make it work. I mean... this Herald business makes all of this...” He motioned to the room they were in, the chapel becoming emblematic of the Chantry as a whole. “...something that will be with us no matter what. And while it might be ‘easier’ to deal with if I were to join the numbers of the faithful, I think I can safely say that won’t be happening.” He paused at that, as if gauging what Cullen would make of that statement.

Cullen did feel a pang of disappointment that he was not swaying Anaan into belief, into willingness to, as the Chantry taught, ascend to the Maker’s side when he died. That, however, was quietly pushed aside by a realization – whether or not Anaan was some model of piety, a true believer, someone who recited the Chant of Light every day, none could deny that he was a good man. If the Maker refused to welcome this man to his side because he didn’t speak the Word of the Chant, then it wasn’t Anaan who needed to open his heart. It would be the Maker who had closed off one of the best men that Cullen had ever known. 

“This is a very complicated topic, I’m coming to realize,” he said to Anaan. “It all seemed so much simpler when I was a child. When the Chantry was the center of my life. But after the last year, seeing the people who we were supposed to look up to and respect among the Chantry squabble and bicker like politicians. Rather than comfort the people who looked to them for answers, they simply wanted to secure their position. I still believe in the Chant, but... I suppose it’s harder to believe in the Chantry. We, the Inquisition, did more for Thedas than the Chantry.”

For a moment, Anaan was silent. Cullen knew Anaan well enough to recognize that his silence was the kind where he was mulling over his possible responses, usually meaning that at least one of them could be something that would cause an argument. Still, he ultimately seemed to decide on one of the responses. “After the mother came here, asking for us to send Cassandra and Leliana to the Grand Cathedral, I spoke with Cassandra about it. I told her that I felt the Chantry had failed, that it had in many ways become the Imperium that Andraste had fought against.”

The audacity of the statement made Cullen chuckle. “I imagine that did not go over well with her,” he said.

“Better than I expected, honestly. She mostly just said that she would expect that from a non-believer, and then pretty much barreled past what I was saying to talk about her idea of what the Chantry should be.” Anaan let out a chuckle of his own. “I walked away from the conversation on my own power, so I took it as a victory.”

“Probably for the best.” A pause. “That said... I did just say that I saw the same thing you did, the same failure to live up to the ideals Andraste spoke of, that her followers devoted the Chantry to. There is a lot of failure for the people who we supposedly look up to and believe in, trust to lead us through these times, to act as we need.”

“Maybe that’s why so many gravitated to this business of me being the Herald of Andraste,” Anaan said. “If the people they had been looking to had failed so much to offer them the leadership they need, it’s no surprise that they turned to the ‘Herald’ so easily.” Not that the ease with which he’d been accepted as this messiah figure by the people of Thedas was any easier to accept from that perspective, but it at least made sense that way.

They both were silent for a moment, considering things. “So, how does this all play out, then?” Cullen asked.

Anaan gave what Cullen would consider an almost hopeful shrug. “I think the gap between believer and non is a lot thinner than we give it credit for. We ask the same questions, at least. Is the Chantry working? Is belief all you need? What difficulties do we face in continuing as we are? We have our answers, and they’re right for us.”

“And the fact that they’re different? How does that affect... us?” Cullen asked, though he had some thoughts on the matter himself. He wanted to hear Anaan’s thoughts as well.

“Oh, we’ll probably have this discussion several more times. Unless one of us changes our entire belief system, we’ll probably run into this more than once,” Anaan said. He was smiling now. “The important thing, I think, is less about us believing the same as one another and more about us managing to remember that we love each other, and that we will make this work regardless. I wouldn’t ask you to give up your beliefs for me, even if I don’t understand them. And I would hope you wouldn’t ask me to start praying to Andraste and the Maker just for the sake of making you happy.”

“Of course not,” Cullen said. Although he’d been struggling with the separation of belief between the two of them, he also couldn’t see himself making that kind of demand of his lover. And, he recognized, if he did it only for Cullen and not out of actual belief, it didn’t really mean he believed, just that he was doing it for him. 

Anaan nodded. “Then we go from here. We make this work. Because you matter to me.”

“And you to me.” Cullen closed the gap between them, kissing him. When he pulled back, he smirked at his lover. “So, what would your reaction be if I told you I believe in you?” 

He rightfully deserved the playful shove Anaan gave him.


End file.
